March is an interesting month. It is the 3rd month in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars named after the Roman god of war – Mars. It is that time of the year in time past, when military operations that were paused due to the bashing winter weather, got resumed and the troops got on the March Again! Over the years, March has become the month to reboot global awareness on all things that accentuates the vulnerability of women and re-ignite the war on bridging man-made lack of equity gaps. Reflecting on all the International Women’s Day and the Mothering Sunday celebrations this March, which is sometimes called the month for women, I cannot help but write this letter to mothers from my beloved Edo State and Nigerian Society as well as the larger global society.
My dear Edo State Woman, Nigerian Woman and Women Worldwide, I hope this letter finds you well this 3rd month of 2024 as we March into the known and unknown from the position of strength each of us have been bestowed with by the Creator. The primary question I am seeking answers for, is how are you raising your son(s)? Better put, how are we raising our son(s)? What societal constructs and written rules have coloured your perception of how your son should be raised? Let us start from the very beginning? Let us go to the toys - what toys did you buy for your sons growing up? Whose law was it that made you buy all the toy cars and bikes for your son? Why did you not remember to buy a toy car or plane for your daughter(s)? I see you did not realise your son could play with a barbie doll. What made your brain file it as an abomination to buy that toy kitchen set for your son? Do not get me wrong – I am not saying be overly capricious in the toys department. No. All I am saying is to be borderless, not tunnel visioned. To give the children a balanced perspective.
Come with me as we leave Toyland and proceed more into the real world. Dear mothers, why do you tell Osas to clean the house every day of the week and twice on Sunday while her brother, your son Nosa, is left with no significant domestic chore to do. Why is Ngozi always made to cook the meals for her brothers? My point dear mothers, is why you do not rotate the roles and chores between the sons and daughters? Why is there no diversity of engagement and a multi-coloured lived experiential pool in your household? In an alternative scenario of non-limitation, I am proud to declare I learnt how to change flat car tires and replace fuses in electrical appliances as a teenager thanks to the fusion of a father who was solidly liberated and a working educational system at the time. Between my father and the 6-3-3-4 system where technical and vocational education was thoroughly taught in Nigerian Unity Schools in the 90s, I grew up as the girl who was inspired and included all round. I studied building technology, mechanical technology, and technical drawing with superb hands-on experience. Not that everyone must have my exposure – far from it. I am proffering that we pull down those societal constructs that cage us and embrace a socio-cultural fluidity that is all encompassing, where people thrive in harmony, steeped in empathy and relational currency devoid of a rigidity of roles.
My dear mothers, to bring the above grammar closer home, let me simplify it with this real life example; are you like one of my friends blessed with three sons, who once told me “My boys do not cook”. Pray, my dear mothers if your sons do not cook, who then will cook for them? Why are you preparing them for a caged life? Let us think about this critically – why are you not giving your son(s) any options and making them dependent on another person? I suggest you give them freedom and liberate them from the apron strings of anyone else by teaching them life survival skills one of which is cooking. Freeing them from choosing a life partner later in life with stomach infrastructure top on their selection list criteria instead of what her frontal lobe performs and or what is in her hands which she brings to the table.
By the way my dear mothers, this letter will be incomplete if I do not mention the most comical drama of all, whose key protagonists are the demi-gods mothers from my side of the world in Edo State create – ‘my one eye or only son syndrome’. My dear mothers, do you treat that boy child you have, who is blessed amongst his sisters like a god? Making him `he-who-they-must-all-serve` while he struts around like a peacock, with an over bloated sense of entitlement the size of a cathedral? Do you end up making his sisters the antagonists in this drama whose script was given to you by society? You are both producer and director of the script you choose not to interrogate. Your excuse being – that is how your ancestors before you did it. I am a strong advocate for our culture and an ambassador of my roots. However, I believe in cultural integration and interrogation of certain practices that retard human interactions. I advocate we begin to let go of what is not edifying in our culture and integrate it with aspects of cultural practices from other parts of the world, worthy of emulation while we retain those key aspects of our culture that are fantastic. We do not lose our cultural identity rather; we enrich our cultural value for human life. Think about it mothers, do you think even you can keep up the worship of your `demi-gods` son(s) for a lifetime?
Before I forget my dear mothers, please may I ask why many of us tell our sons that boys do not cry? Is it really a sign of weakness to cry? Or a position of strength to express our “shared humanity” irrespective of gender. Why are we raising emotionally bankrupt human beings? When we are the ones who can fill their emotional accounts so they can issue cashable valid emotional cheques? Everyday, you complain about the inadequacies in your husband, his father, yet why are you not making better effort to create a new palpably improved version of your husband in your son by teaching him what his father may have missed imbibing growing up. My dear mother in the struggle to shake the table and the march to be positive disruptors that inspire and include the equity for women, we sure have work to do. We must together with the father of our son(s), we must begin to raise strong yet gentle giant(s), who have maximum self-esteem and will not feel threatened by the empowered girl child who will become the woman of purpose and direction tomorrow.
Dear mother, you are the key to unlocking the door of our social-cultural deconstruction of society’s conventional wisdom and challenging man-made societal norms that are perpetuated by ‘womankind’. There is evidence that show how women perpetrate archaic laws handed down to them by faceless societal elders and how they pride themselves as the guardians and custodians of culture on the altar of which, many women reducing practices abound. Mothers, why are we auto destroying when in us, lies a huge chuck of mankind’s re-birth? Do you realise that you are the main ingredient in that fertiliser that will help liberate, germinate, and nurture the minds of more progressive minded men, who will partner in the struggles to rewrite our patrilinear societal tendencies. Yes, it is true that the fathers also have a role to play and that should never be trivialised. However, by virtue of the positioning God and nature has given to you in the lives of your son(s), and from the evidence-based phenomenon that is ‘Oedipus complex’ you are the most strategically positioned of all influences and you hold the manual to raise the kind of sons you always wanted your husbands to be. You also hold the ace in raising your daughters - the women of tomorrow in tandem with your significant other. Men without inferior complex, who do not need to put any body down to defy gravity and will effortlessly march side by side or even soar with high performing empowered women – without qualms.
Mother(s) my dearest, what kind of son(s) are we raising?
Your fellow mother in positive disruption and a humble societal construct deconstructor,
Dr. Loretta Oduware Ogboro-Okor, is author of the book, My Father’s Daughter